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The Web 2.0 Effect: Which Host Will Survive? site presented itself as a test of web hosting services, but now appears to be an elaborate promotion for the winner of the test.

Web 2.0 Effect Debunked As Marketing Ploy

Each day, something attracts the attention of the fanbases of social media sites like Reddit and Digg, to the point where these sites send the destination plenty of traffic. Some marketers have tried to take advantage of this to their benefit.

Devindra Hardawar wrote about one such effort from earlier this year. The Web 2.0 Effect project appeared to measure the effectiveness of several low-cost hosting solutions. On its surface, such a project would have some value for people seeking a comparison of services.

Hardawar and some friends did some digging into the background of the site. They were skeptical and believed that the winner, Burton Hosting, backed the project that they ultimately won.

The blog post Hardawar wrote regarding their research showed a lot of threads all leading back to two people, Russ Jones and Ronald Jaffre. Little pieces of evidence indicate that the Web 2.0 Effect existed solely as a viral marketing effort. A company called Virante, where Jones is CTO, apparently did the marketing work.

"While we couldn’t find any direct link between Virante and Burton Hosting, the implication gathered from all of this evidence is clear: Virante fooled the web good," Handawar initially noted in conclusion. But later, others weighed in on the post.

One person found a number of hidden links on the Web 2.0 Effect website, and copied them. A single-pixel tracker for Burton was one of the links. "Why only have a tracker with Burton?" the commentor, a Digg user, asked.

Later, the hidden links, including the tracker, were removed. Someone else looked at the IP address in the tracker link, and by simply requesting a non-existent page found that it resolved to this subdomain: www.viranteviral.burtondns.org.

These discoveries have come well after the website accomplished what its backers wanted from it. The discussion about this viral marketing effort indicated two things to us. One, viral marketing can be potently effective, to the point where the majority of people don't recognize it as such.

And two, other marketers will learn from the mistakes made here, which Handawar and others discovered. Making whois details private, and turning off the server signature as used by the tracker domain, will mask the initial clues Handawar found.

Be wary of what you see online.